Chick-fil-A Biblical Family of the Day

Today’s Chick-fil-A Biblical Family of the Day: Slaughtering heirs of the previous dynasty (2 Samuel 21:1-14).

Now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year; and David inquired of the Lord. The Lord said, “There is blood-guilt on Saul and on his house, because he put the Gibeonites to death.”

So the king called the Gibeonites and spoke to them. (Now the Gibeonites were not of the people of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites; although the people of Israel had sworn to spare them, Saul had tried to wipe them out in his zeal for the people of Israel and Judah.) David said to the Gibeonites, “What shall I do for you? How shall I make expiation, that you may bless the heritage of the Lord?”

The Gibeonites said to him, “It is not a matter of silver or gold between us and Saul or his house; neither is it for us to put anyone to death in Israel.”

He said, “What do you say that I should do for you?”

They said to the king, “The man who consumed us and planned to destroy us, so that we should have no place in all the territory of Israel — let seven of his sons be handed over to us, and we will impale them before the Lord at Gibeon on the mountain of the Lord.”

The king said, “I will hand them over.”

But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Saul’s son Jonathan, because of the oath of the Lord that was between them, between David and Jonathan son of Saul. The king took the two sons of Rizpah daughter of Aiah, whom she bore to Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth; and the five sons of Merab daughter of Saul, whom she bore to Adriel son of Barzillai the Meholathite; he gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they impaled them on the mountain before the Lord. The seven of them perished together. They were put to death in the first days of harvest, at the beginning of the barley harvest.

Then Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth, and spread it on a rock for herself, from the beginning of harvest until rain fell on them from the heavens; she did not allow the birds of the air to come on the bodies by day, or the wild animals by night. When David was told what Rizpah daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done, David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of his son Jonathan from the people of Jabesh-gilead, who had stolen them from the public square of Beth-shan, where the Philistines had hung them up, on the day the Philistines killed Saul on Gilboa. He brought up from there the bones of Saul and the bones of his son Jonathan; and they gathered the bones of those who had been impaled. They buried the bones of Saul and of his son Jonathan in the land of Benjamin in Zela, in the tomb of his father Kish; they did all that the king commanded. After that, God heeded supplications for the land.

“After that God heeded supplications for the land”?! Why didn’t they teach us this in Sunday School?

Vermic

Of course, when the Aztecs murdered children so Tlaloc would make it rain, that was pagan barbarism.

Münchner Kindl

I got lost in the second part. Where was the sackcloth spread, where did Jonathan’s and Saul’s bones come from? And why killing children as restitution – I thought the Abraham story and the “eye for eye” laws had already done away with that? Fred, some explanations please?

He confessed that he had been naïve to the issues at hand and the unintended impact of his company’s actions.

He gave money to an organization who claims that homosexuals have a goal to “abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the ‘prophets’ of a new sexual order.” Really, what did he expect?

Dan expressed regret and genuine sadness when he heard of people being treated unkindly in the name of Chick-fil-a — but he offered no apologies for his genuine beliefs about marriage.

“I’m sorry I keep hurting people. I don’t know how to stop!”

No, seriously, I don’t know how to reconcile the above to this. He’s surprised and dismayed that supporting vicious and hateful liars has led to people being hurt? He’s unhappy that when he stomps 0n someone’s foot, it results in pain for them? The solution to this dilemma is quite simple, Dan…

I don’t know how not to be cynical of this turn of events.

http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

As evidenced by the likes of Chris Hadrick, there really are people who have shiny wonderful intentions and have just no idea how to execute them. One hopes that Dan Cathy is amenable to reasoned discussion, though.

AnonymousSam

I’m not sure it translates to good intentions though. He still opposes gay marriage, he’s just promising to keep quiet about it, at least on the mainstream. That means he’s going to continue hurting people, which makes him feel just awful, but not awful enough to reconsider his position on stamping on their feet.

http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

I think it’s the difference between personally philosophically opposed to same-sex marriage and keeping that to himself, versus using his social and economic power to actively push against its legal recognition.

AnonymousSam

That’s only marginally better to me. Every person keeping silent is a person who acquiesces to status quo, and it can only be worse if they silently agree with the status quo.

http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

I’ll take what I can get, TBQH.

AnonymousSam

So will I, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be particularly happy with it. Still, every donor who stops contributing to groups like the FRC is one step closer to starving their efforts to cause harm.

http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

*sigh*

Disqus had my comment, and then it eated it.

You can still see all the comments if you temporarily disable Javascript though.

SamEtic

“This past week Chick-fil-A shared with me the 2011 IRS Form 990, filed in November for the WinShape Foundation, along with 2012 financials. The IRS has not released the 990 to the public yet, but the financials affirm Chick-fil-A’s values a year prior to the controversy this past July. The nearly $6 million in outside grant funding focuses on youth, education, marriage enrichment and local communities. The funding reflects Chick-fil-A’s promised commitment not to engage in “political or social debates,” and the most divisive anti-LGBT groups are no longer listed.” It sounds like Chik-Fil-A is stopping their contributions to FRC. I know it’s not an apology, but it is a start. I probably still won’t eat there though.

AnonymousSam

*Nods* I can’t help but be suspicious of that, too, though. When a business does something that might threaten its profits, and then stops doing that thing which might threaten its profits, that’s not necessarily a sign that anything’s improved. Chik-fil-A is still donating to “marriage enrichment” — well, what does that mean? Marriage counseling services? If so, through what kind of provider? Ones who refuse to counsel homosexual partners, ones which advocate never getting a divorce even in abuse cases, what? They contribute toward education — such as Christian private schools, who reinforce the “homosexuals = pedophiles acting in Satan’s service who want to destroy religion” message? We can’t really know.

It’s wrong of me to be so suspicious of people, but in light of what I quoted in my first post, I can’t just assume the best of them. “The best” in this scenario is “he was grossly ignorant of what he was supporting.” And he’s not quite apologizing for that by acknowledging that it caused harm.

Carstonio

What bugs me is that Cathy still believes he’s entitled to an opinion on who strangers should marry. (One is not entitled to an opinion, only to an informed one.) And that his company backed off funding for FRC only because of the threat to its bottom line. I wonder how he would feel if people campaigned for laws denying legal marriage to him specifically.

Amaryllis

The sackcloth was spread at the place of execution, where the heirs’ bodies had been left exposed. Their mother camped out there to keep the wild beasts from the bodies, until David was shamed into retrieving them and burying them properly.

Saul and Jonathan had been killed in battle in Gilboa, and their bodies had been left exposed, nailed to a wall if I remember correctly, until the citizens of Jabesh-Gilead– an Israelite city from that Saul had defended from its Canaanite enemies– rescued them and buried them. As David needed to bury these new bones anyway, he went and got Saul’s and Jonathan’s while he was at it, and had them buried with the bones of the sons and nephews in the family tomb.

As for killing children– although I’m not sure these young men were actually children– I guess when the demands of realpolitik come in the door, ideals fly out the window.

Amaryllis

The Chick-fil-A Poem of the Day:

The love of the Lord is persistent indeed! It follows me on jackal’s feet and worries my flesh in my dreams to shield me from sleep.

I bow to Him, the Merciful, every time I bend to flap the cloth that frightens the vultures away from the bodies of my sons and my kinsmen!

…

The vengeance of the Lord is mighty! It stoops from the sky even to the simple like a carrion-bird, and shines with the gleam of polished bone.

So the sons of Saul must die, and in all Israel the only inheritance for the mother of the sons of the Lord’s chosen king is a rock and a cloth on a hill to watch those sons bleach in the heat. As for me and my house, we will fill Your ears with our hatred until the last of us is as Saul’s sons, and it shall stand as a witness that though they were the seed of Saul, I bore them, and they were my sons too!

Look at me and see, the Lord is good to a woman in her dotage, and provides for her support in her dying years. Surely I should be grateful and praise Him!